Old Mahabalipuram Road – For once, something good !

This looks like the ugly-looking Building promoter’s graphic. The Building promoters promote their buildings with an Art – the futuristic look of their building whose basement works even wouldn’t have started. There would be their building, and no building in the surrounding. If it were a hi-tech building, it would be denoted by a girl with a t-shirt and walking along with her pet-dog. Hmm. !

This one sure does look like that. But, will you believe me if I told you that this is a Bus Stop on the Old Mahabalipuram Road ?

Oh Yeah ! The people who make a daily adventure-trip to their offices on the OMR would certainly have noticed this. To those of you who never got a chance to step in to the IT Super Express Highway, you are looking at the future of Old Mahabalipuram Road.

Having completed one stretch of OMR (from Madhyakailash to SRP Tools), people are working on the cosmetic aspects of the road. The travel on this stretch is a pleasure. Don’t worry about your speed. Full Throttle. No Potholes. No Signals. Most importantly, these guys have taken care of the look of the road. The compound walls of various buildings bordering this IT Highway, have turned out into Art Exhibitions. Some stupendous art works (Mostly Modern Art and some sculptures) decorate the road. First time, Chennai is exhibiting some sculptures that aren’t political.

Will post the pictures on the Chennai Metroblog Flickr Group.

And all the Bus stops on the OMR look like this. Im not sure, how they will end up. But at the initial stages, it looks fantastic. Roads are well planned for the bus-stop. Some of the insane Chennai bus-drivers, who wouldn’t care about the traffic behind, would stop the bus in the middle of the road to take the passengers. But here, some reasonable deviation on this road will make them go closer to the bus-stop, and wouldnt block the traffic.

Trust me – if this road goes on until Siruseri, with the same poise, then it would be a great blessing for the Software Souls. There would be no “Take-home-Back-pain”. Currently, people are scared to go on bikes, once in a while when they miss their usual company-bus. Scared because of the road conditions.

When I was new to this road people used to calm me down by telling a fact. “Marchle Mudinjidum !” (Will get over by March). I used to wonder how this project of such a big magnitude could end by March. Then an article on Hindu reveled the year – March 2008. :)

They’ve built a massive underground storm drain all along the road before laying it. It has multiple leads into the Buckingham Canal. But if they don’t desilt the BC, chances are the water won’t be ableto flow out, and it will still flood. So far whatever they’ve done on this stretch is pretty impressive. I’m told they’re going to desilt the BC as well.
David